Ersatz
by chaparral-crown
Summary: Vader is nothing if not an advocate for justice dealt in equal measure, and he has been so very wronged. Galen Erso will learn to regret aligning his maps to the wrong meridian. (Vader corrects Krennic's mistake. Jyn is both collateral and a painful replacement.)
1. Vader

Lah'mu is as desolate as the rings that shadow it, ashy black soil that leaves no trace on his darker still armor and cape. He has seen the Erso's farmstead, and it is a wretched green parallel to the moisture farms he can recall from years past. Water beads on the grasses and bordering condensation towers, slips between metal plates and plants alike. There's a depression in the moss where he knows Lyra Erso has died, and a neighboring one where Galen Erso has mourned her.

A third one, small, just large enough to indicate where someone stood, is disgustingly smug. This one Vader know is where Orson Krennic played spectator. It is an ugly thought to somebody's already ugly scene. _Another day_ , something is crooning to him from behind modulated heartbeats. The _whir-hiss_ of his breathing. He doesn't name it. ( _Sometimes it sounds like **her**._ )

Vader has never been a farmer, but he knows the trade. He knows how to harvest, a bring empty land to bear fruit. He cultivates respect and fear, and all will know him by his works.

Today he will sort out Orson Krennic's poor work, and make it as intended. It is the Emperor's greatest wish for Krennic's project to be successful. From the moment he received notice of Krennic's intentions to confront Galen Erso, Vader follows. It is an itch behind his throat. It is a persistent draw to change his coordinates. The Force wills it, and Vader is one of a very few that know its Truth. Hunting the remaining Jedi can wait a day to clear his mind.

 _Seek out hidden places, trembles something inside. Drag from the dark something terrible and new._

Erso has already been detained. The death troopers that participated in the initial excursion have come back empty handed from the cliffs and canyons beyond the farmstead. Erso has a child, and she is clever enough to avoid notice once she had stepped out into the stormy wilds. But the canyons are thick with dread, and there is no greater hunter in the Empire than he.

Vader steps out into the canyons as well, waving his escort to stay with the shuttle until he returns. There are only two, as he has continuously requested. He would rather have none. They are wise enough to say nothing, despite the undoubted cold that slips in the drafts of their masks. The crunch of stones and sand underneath his feet reminds him of a different time. The petrichor of Lah'mu's occasionally caustic rains grounds this moment in the present.

 _Seek out hidden places, again whispers the Force. Drag from the dark something terrible and new._

* * *

The light is fading when he feels the pieces fall into place. His patience has been rewarded, in spite of the inconvenience. The entire thing is inconvenient. Krennic is inconvenient.

It's nothing worth noting, just a wind-swept hollow in the side of a cliff wall. There's not even a whisper in the Force that makes him think twice about it. The perfect quiet and stillness of it simply clicks into place as being important. Galen Erso is a genius, and to Vader the lack of memorability speaks to him of the engineer's subtle purpose and design.

The small depression in the stone that acts as a hatch to the hidden depths below is mournfully sad. Vader's mind traitorously thinks of children, and for a moment he is taken with the memory of his swinging arms and the red glow of his lightsaber. The practical part of him shoves this aside, while the thought lingers and thinks to itself that it will be more just and kind if she is already dead. ( _Please don't – please **don't** –_ )

The hatch lifts easily.

Jyn Erso is small and soft like a sleeping creature, but her face is drawn upwards and disappointed in the dark of her shelter. Vader is not her father. She is not foolish enough to think it is her mother either – she has seen her die. He can understand that particular wound.

She is fearful, but not of him specifically. Vader is only a symptom of a great disappointment. He knows this in his metal and bones, the Force a choking breeze in his hollows. It is novel to him. ( _You're used to being the problem in full, not accessory to the murder._ ) It almost makes him angry. He tamps down the feeling with violence until his mind can again be quiet and numb.

Vader is uncomfortable. Her hair is braided. It is curly. He is thankful her eyes are green. He breathes, _whir-hiss_.

"Jyn Erso," he says. "A commendation is given for avoiding an entire squad of death troopers, but I am a rather different animal than them. Do not presume to test how much so." A pause. "Your mother is dead, and your father a prisoner." He lets this settle, watches a few small motions in her brows. Her eyes are glassy. "Come out of that hole. Do not run. Do not fight."

She thinks about it. Vader allows it. Her hands are small and tight around a lantern that looks to be fading. He knows fear of the dark, what it was like before he was burnt. He knows fear better than anyone he's ever met.

"Can I go to my Papa?" she asks, voice very little and weightless in the tunnel. She is hopeful, but withdrawn like she expects the bite next. She has good instincts, and this keeps him patient. Vader is not cruel to the undeserving.

"You will climb out immediately," says Vader.

He's not in the business of making promises anymore. He hates them, and Vader destroys anything that he hates until he can feel nothing. He makes threats instead.

She begins to climb.

When he sees them up close, the dark haired curls that frame the sides of her face are hurtful.

* * *

"I am here to correct your mistake, Director."

It is all the warning he gives the crew of the ship, walking briskly to the captain's deck. The weight of him in their white spaces is satisfying heavy. The staff has the good sense to look sick and tuck it away before it can annoy him. Krennic is still in his officer dress grey uniform, and Galen Erso is the very image of the martyr with a heavily bruised face and a new standard Imperial uniform that looks like it itches at him. Krennic's men must have given him a very particular welcome back in exchange for Krennic's wound. Vader has seen Erso before, and is surprised to recognize him underneath all of the damage and the greying beard. Vader is observant, but he does not trifle with remembering details that don't help him. Erso had not been so hang-dog in the past, merely foolish. ( _Be fair, he's lost his wife and **you certainly** know how the foolishness leaks out of you after that._ )

Erso clearly recognizes him. He is not afraid of Vader, but the set of his mouth speaks of dread that matched Lah'mu's canyons. Perhaps it has always been his fear and not Jyn's that hang heavy in the farmstead. ( _"Can I go to my Papa?" says such small hope in your vacuous and ringing head._ )

"Lord Vader," says Krennic, clearly stunned. Penitent. Hesitant. He's not sure which mistake Vader is referring to. Vader looks forward to pressing on that particular sore spot."We did not know to expect you. I had been under the impression you were attending to something on Coruscant. I did not think so small a trip would be of interest to you."

"A presumption. What interests me is likely beyond your ability to understand, Director Krennic. I do suppose you could appreciate that I find it interesting that you could not make do with the notes that were left to you. Where's that spectacular wit and intellect that the Emperor entertains?"

Krennic's neck twitches slightly when he pops his jaw, exhaling his resentment. He would not be so foolish as to put it to words. "My friend," says Krennic, light and laughing like he's made a good joke, "Galen here is a great asset to the Empire. I daresay he knows more than even the greatest Master Jedi about kybar crystals. It seems fitting to use them for the Emperor's glory over the Rebellion."

Vader's lightsaber feels heavy at his hip. "An intellectual knowledge of their composition and usefulness, I am sure." His own voice is mocking. "With no Master Jedi to compare to, I find your statement to be quite empty."

"One of your own great victories over the use of kybar," Krennic says with a bow at the waist and an arm. The sweeping gesture amuses Vader as much as it jabs. It makes him think of older grievances, and Vader is well beyond that yoke. ( _Liar._ ) He doesn't want to play word games with this self-obsessed idiot. Vader wants the sacred quiet of his own flagship, the Exactor.

"The death of one Lyra Erso will be recorded as suicide to avoid capture. She will not be sainted by the Rebel propaganda," says Vader. "Your troopers will be recycled into an Imperial training camp for their gross inability to capture a small child in an otherwise barren wasteland. Mention of your wound will be stricken from the record as well, so I suggest you avoid the medical wing unless you'd like to be contradicted and afterwards barred from it. Hopefully you have made use of it before my arrival." This is the punishment for his inconvenience. It is petty, but felt for the threat it is. "One wonders at what other incompetencies happen under your watch, Director."

Krennic frowns, a twitch on his lips again. "It is a delight for one such as yourself to take a personal interest in our little project. And Jyn Erso? May I offer the support of my own supervising crew to help you locate her? Or has she been presumed dead by this point? I understand the storms can be quite...substantial on Lah'mu."

To this, Vader pays no attention to Krennic but instead focuses his eyes unseen to Galen Erso, who has the look of a man before a firing squad and will stay quiet lest he say more than he wants. The air is thick with the acridness of his fear, though Vader can see very little of it on his face.

The plan has always been such: Director Orson Krennic, current scientific lead of the Tarkin Initiative, will re-acquaint energy scientist Galen Erso with his kyber crystal research. The weapon completed with Erso's assistance will be used as an incentive to discourage any detractors of the Empire. Civil war comes to rest after years of resistance to change. Palpatine's rule, and Vader's by proxy, becomes the only justice unto the galaxy.

But Galen Erso does not look like a man much motivated by this imagined future. Indeed, the removal of his wife and child leaves a man bereft. It would be a kindness for Jyn Erso to be dead. He is surprised to have thought this twice now. Galen Erso is relieved of his duty to the rebellion and life and can drift through the project until he has become useless or belligerent waiting for some sort of absolution.

It would also be a kindness for Jyn Erso to be missing. The erstwhile scientist can labor under the delusion that his daughter is safe, and that all he does moving forward is in expectation that it keeps Krennic from investigating anymore. From investing interest in the leverage that she represents. Their friendship is in tatters, so blackmail would have been the most effective tool against a man that knows his treason would already earn him death. This is not the desperate inspiration that Vader would wring out of him for his crimes. Erso cannot die, so Vader must mete out his punishment in some new way.

( _You will ensure his compliance. You will wreck him._ )

Vader is not kind.

He thinks to the small face climbing up the ladder on Lah'mu, Jyn Erso's small mouth downturned and sorrowful. ( _She has curly brown hair._ ) It makes an old part of him sick. The resentment that he will never be able to fully forget simmers. He had a child once too. It reminds him of his own child that he will never know because of the people that Erso has sympathized with. It is unfair. It is uneven. Vader is nothing if not an advocate for justice dealt in equal measure, and he has been so very wronged. Galen Erso will learn to regret aligning his maps to the wrong meridian.

"Don't be foolish," says Vader, not bothering to look either man in the face. "I have already found her."

Krennic sounds absolutely stunned, and then deeply satisfied. "Of course, I never had any doubt in your prowess. You've spent years hunting criminals out of their holes. I can imagine a child would be no great challenge to you. Well Galen," he says, a little sing-song and mean, "I suppose you have plenty of reasons to stay busy now."

Galen Erso looks ill. He looks as though he might cry, eyes watery and crows feet tight and dancing at the corners. "Whatever I may do to be of service to the Empire," he says stiffly, working around a confused tongue. "I would be greatly appreciative of a moment to see that she's well. Orson is right," he breathes, "the storms are quite harsh."

"Perfectly well, Erso. In fact," and this is where Vader takes his satisfaction, waits for it to be just a little too long to be comfortable, "an extended stay on the Exactor is in order to make certain that **you** are properly settled."

Vader's ever-present anger feels soothed and cold looking at Galen Erso. It's pleasant for someone to be more wretched than him on occasion.

( _The difference is that you came by your wretchedness honestly._ )

* * *

A/N: This is one of many chapters.


	2. Jyn

The expectation that this would end well is an expectation that Jyn does not afford herself. ' _You can't be disappointed by things that aren't_ ,' her mother tells her, and she nods. She always nods. Jyn has been told that it is the best way to show she understands if she doesn't want to talk, and there's very few times that is the case. The adults talk plenty, and she hangs in at doorways, thirsty for their voices.

Of the voices, she loves her father's best.

The bunk room of the ship she has been brought to is simple. There is a sleeping bench with white sheets and two pillows, a small desk bolted into the wall with a long vertical light and chair, and strictly no ornamentation. Jyn doesn't know what prison is supposed to look like, but this must be it. She has lived in Imperial apartments before, and they are almost as barren as these, but something antiseptic continues to follow her. There are none of the tender vines that her parents grow along long window edges. No carefully knitted throws over the foot of the bed. She is relieved when Lord Vader allows her to keep her backpack and her silence.

Lord Vader. She tastes this name like a sour berry behind her teeth. She knows he is Lord Vader, because within 5 minutes of docking, at least twenty people had said it. She's heard his name on the news in Coruscant before. She thought he would be a ghost or a monster.

( _He is both. You won't know that for years._ )

"You will sit here until an officer of my choosing comes for you. You do not speak your name, you do not ask unnecessary questions. Understand?" asks Lord Vader before he leaves. She is entranced by his breathing. He is like the exhaust of some great ship, and all of his fuel spills out hot and burning on the eyes if she looks too long.

She nods, but doesn't speak.

He nods as well, and is gone like a shadow runs from light.

Boredom takes her before sadness. In the hiding place, she cried like a baby and was embarrassed by it. It made her cheeks sticky and dusty with the dark ash of the canyon. She didn't want to be found by her father that way. She scrubbed furious child-fists to her cheeks, and the next time the hatch lifted, she was disappointed but clean faced. Mama will ( _would_ ) be proud.

But now the room is white, and black, and bland with clean lines. It's dizzying, and she feels like she has disappeared. She reaches for her backpack and lays out the contents in front of her in tidy quadrants to anchor herself. Here are five freeze-dried meals, two of which she hates but that Papa insists will help keep her healthy. They taste of dryness and salt, even with the water added. Here also is a small drinking container, no clear water inside but instead a light green clear fluid that tastes of the mosses along the sides of her home. The moisture towers collect the humidity from the sour mists near their farm, but always the collected water is stained green.

When she digs deeper, there is spare clothing, two homespun tunics with winks of shiny floss at the cuffs. She keeps chips of mica and black glass from the mountains, reflecting the light back onto the walls in subtle glints. ( _Your mother's necklace, the shard of crystal at your neck, is warm but never reflects. It keeps the light's secrets to itself._ ) These she leaves out on the desk to catch glints of light from the lamp.

There are utensils for eating in a cheap but clean aluminum. There is a small printed book of planets in the Outer Rim, all tidy and straight lined like the room. The back of it reads 'Book Three of Beginner's Guide to Imperial Territories, Bound Edition.' She doesn't think the other two came with them from their apartment in Coruscant. She doesn't know what to do with the one she has, other than to flip through the pictures, looking for the rings that shaded their farm until she settles on the picture of Lah'mu.

Jyn doesn't even know if she's in the Outer Rim at this point. That, and not the being guided to the passenger shuttle, or through the docking bay, or through the hallways listening to Vader's fascinating breathing and the harsh click of his heels on the floor, is what at last brings the knot of dread into her stomach where it sits until she falls asleep.

The lights never go off. The sound never changes. There are no voices in this hallway.

* * *

A woman with exactingly straight blonde hair eventually opens the door to her bunk, her outfit every bit as grey and straight lined as the room. Jyn struggles to shake the sleep from her eyes, black grit coming away against the sides of her hands. The woman frowns, looking from around her headpiece that projects onto a glass screen that covers one dark blue eye. Some kind of holovid. There are words, but everything is backwards.

"Please sit at the edge of the bed," the woman says, standing at attention, hands politely clasped behind her back. "I am your attending officer. Lord Vader has asked that I see to your needs until he returns. I strongly suspect that you and I will be in each other's company until our next appointed rendezvous, so I would appreciate your cooperation and attention."

Jyn nods, sighing. Her feet don't quite touch the floor from where she sits. Her boots are a little muddy. She feels dirty next to the officer's cleanly whiteness.

The officer looks her over, and Jyn feels the same way that the cans in the pantry must feel when being counted before a restock. "You have no pains? No cuts or bruises?" she asks after a length. Only one eyebrow is raised out of its studied bland expression.

"No," says Jyn. "I'm fine." She swings a foot forward, nervous. "When will Lord Vader be back?"

"When it pleases him, which it often does please him to not return for many weeks. We are on the flagship Exactor, and where he places us, we will stay. I would not presume you will be his first stop when he gets back, if he remembers you at all."

This stings in a way that she doesn't expect. She is used to Papa's friends ( _'work associates' he calls them before the farm, before you all left_ ) that pay her no attention, but she has no Papa this time. Jyn has always been told to seek out one of her parents at a party or in a crowd. They'll know where to put her, where she belongs. She doesn't know who she belongs to right now.

She swallows. "What is your name?" she asks after a moment's pause. "What should I call you?"

The officer looks uncomfortable at the question. Jyn has not seen very many women in the Imperial government, although she has often wondered if they were hiding some in the hardness of the stormtroopers' armor. Shells are made to keep you safe. That must be why the officer's hair is carefully slicked back and unmoving, her face stiff. She has made a shell that people can see but not sneak into. It seems wise.

"Just 'officer' or 'ma'am' for now," she says. "I would prefer further instruction on what is intended for you before asking too many questions, as it is not for me to know. Come, I will take you to the fresher and we can see about cleaning you up. You'll feel more like sleeping through a full cycle after that."

So Jyn doesn't belong to her. At least that is clear, she thinks, feeling the woman's hands clinically working her hair out of the braid.

* * *

While they certainly don't entertain children on Imperial starships, Jyn finds that their commissary does have a droid in it that is as capable of modifying uniforms as it is of handing out standard supplies. With over 40,000 employees aboard, explains her keeper-officer, that would be impractical to not have. While it is hardly a handmade floss-sleeved frock from her Mama, the droid manages to draw up a pattern from its archives for a basic long sleeved pinafore in grey wood, and an under dress of white.

The shoes they can do nothing about for now, though the commissary inventory droid does eventually find something to serve as socks. Her boots from home are steam cleaned, though they remain tattered and brackish. Keeper-officer makes a clicking noise with her tongue, but her face never betrays anything, just steers her with one hand with perfectly tidy nails. ( _You bite yours. It's good to have something to worry over._ )

Her hair is put back into a basic plait of a braid, and Jyn is again left on her own in her room, albeit this time with a small holopad that she can write and draw on. Her writing is still not good; Papa has been trying to help her with her letters, but she has so little use for them that her mind wanders and she instead watches clouds gather on the horizon of her farm, cast in sun and shadow of the rings alike.

She draws this. This too is something to worry about and occupy herself with. Lord Vader promised her nothing about seeing her father, but she is determined to have something to show when he does allow it. This is the pattern she falls into, with keeper-officer interrupting for the fresher and with food. She looks through her book of Outer Rim planets until she can name them before turning the page to it. There are no clocks, there are no nights, and the chips of black-glass and mica are always bright on the desk and reflecting to the wall. She will have stars here.

* * *

Jyn hears the _whir-hiss_ before the door opens. The coil in her stomach is tight with fear, but it is almost with the relief of a light coming on in the dark that she sees Lord Vader cross into her room, keeper-officer standing rigid at attention behind him in the white hallway. He is heavy like a black stone in the field near home.

"Jyn Erso," says Lord Vader after some length. He has watched her, and she has done her best to not fidget with the tail of her braid. "I trust you have found Officer Nyman's attentions thorough. I see that they have found you appropriate clothing."

It is strange how he talks to her like an adult. Jyn doesn't know if there are other children anywhere on the flagship. Maybe Lord Vader has never spoken with one before. But she belongs to nobody right now, and being spoken to like an adult helps steady her nerves and her go of the breath she is consciously holding to not make unnecessary noise.

"She has been nice, thank you," she says as she has been taught to. "There were no shoes, so I still have mine." She is briefly glad that the hem of the dress covers most of the rough shoes. She feels embarrassed by them for some reason. They are not tidy like everything else on the Exactor.

Another long pause. It would be uncomfortable were it not for the fact that Jyn thinks Lord Vader is watching her, waiting for something else, like some great beast from behind the mask on his face. Maybe there's nothing left to discuss. Maybe she said the wrong thing. ( _Maybe you are a dirty thing that has no one._ ) Her heart beats a little frantically, and she wishes her Papa would grab her hand. She is so small in here and there's no spot to crawl into.

"May I see my Papa?" she asks, voice tiny and tight and knowing that the answer will be no. She can't be disappointed with it.

"No," he says, drawing it out slowly like a thought. It doesn't hurt, since she doesn't expect the yes. "Not yet." This part does surprise her, and she breathes a little quicker. "There is much I need to do before we return to Director Krennic's tender mercies," and Lord Vader's voice is thick with dislike. She dislikes Krennic too. She thinks that is the man that has killed her beautiful Mama. "You will remain with my crew until it is convenient to check in on their progress. Officer Nyman belongs to my Intelligence crew, but will see to your needs."

Lord Vader turns to leave.

"Am I in prison?" she blurts out, the words slipping out before she has the chance to think them over. She's been cautioned against speaking thoughtlessly, but the sweep of his cloak from the room makes her heart chatter. ( _Please don't leave._ ) He doesn't turn around, but Jyn thinks he might be considering.

 _Whir-hiss_. _Whir-hiss_.

"Of a kind. Your father," Lord Vader says after some short length, "is an...esteemed alumni and present guest of the Imperial Research branch. One does not simply retire from Imperial service."

'Retire' is said like something dirty, and Jyn thinks of her Papa's hands working on the moisture towers. He's always had careful hands, but not often clean ones since they began farming. ( _You can be dirty with him. You are made of the same stuff._ )

"You will remain with my crew for the time being. Once I am confident of both Galen Erso and Orson Krennic's ability to actually do what has been asked of them, I will re-evaluate the situation. Do not make the error of thinking that this will be a comfortable arrangement," and to this he turns to her, and Jyn wishes she could see his eyes. She doesn't ever know where he's looking. It feels right that he always looks straightforward, without hesitation, but she wants to know. "Your father is distraught that I am your jailer. Do not give his cause to be frustrated by that."

Jyn nods. Lord Vader looks at her with the same unmoving stillness of keeper-officer from over his shoulder. She wonders if Officer Nyman learned that from him, or if Lord Vader collects stillness around him where he can.

"I understand," she says in a whisper when he does not leave. It's the pain and pull of losing a tooth, giving Lord Vader these words. They are the last she has given her Papa, and she does not want them shared. They are disappearing into the quiet of the hallway, unacknowledged and unheard by the officer beyond the doorway. They feel wasted.

Lord Vader nods when he walks out. He does not look back.

Long after the door has closed and she has eaten a light meal, Jyn watches the glints of her shiny keepsakes on the desk. She is shoring herself against the expectation of having anyone of her own to find in a big room.

* * *

A/N: Jyn today. Thank you to everyone that has left feedback, I really appreciate it.


	3. Galen

The petrichor of incoming rain once stung Galen's nose with its sweetness, disguising the smell of rotting fruit in his father's stores. The monsoons of Grange brought the swampy green of mosses and clinging vines closer to his home in the low land neighborhood of the city every solar orbit without fail, and was looked for by most. The abundant and foul smelling creeks and tributaries rose into the shallows of houses and shops, that day slowly overtaking the crates of yellow fruits that the flat land farms yielded for his family's trade. The rising water, the old folks called it each season. Unremarkable, cyclical. Every pant cuff and skirt hem stained a brackish forest green to match. His mother knelt in a puddle of it, and the cobalt blue of her clothed knees grew dark. Galen thinks of light absorption and osmosis, calculated the rate of the water's spread.

His father, hands blistered and sore from the sap of the trees that yielded them, sat on the porch in the quiet of the approaching storm. He would sleep for no more than one hour and three-quarters if he slept quickly, but it was often less. Galen followed the rise and fall of his chest – how deeply it breathed as he moved between awake and dozing off. ( _You will follow Jyn's tiny infant rises and falls of her chest from the cradle too when idle time wrecks your mind; it will be a comfort between the Republic's detainment of your family on Coruscant and the incessant buzzing of unfinished equations._ ) His mother, pale haired and tired, is counting the fruits. Her thin lips, so like his, whispered, and she scored the mud with a finger with each count of 10. She was not good at her figures.

There were between 155 and 160 of them that he can average from the size of the box and the visible volume peeking bird-bright from the tops, but still Mother counted them in the shadow of a sleepy sinking home. "It's for the records, you understand," she whispered, and Galen nods, feeling halfway between a nap before the storm and making a new combination with his chemistry set. He wants to simulate the taste of the afternoon thunder on his tongue. "My clever boy, my bright star, I trust you, but knowing exactly will help him at the market."

He should have thought of that, Galen sulked at the time, some secret shame filling his cheeks with warmth even in the cooling breeze that brought the low-lying cumulonimbus, the equator winds, the geothermal rising of – **youaregettingdistracted**. What a practical simple thing for him to do. He should have written it down for her. The pulse in his throat lurched a bit for her when the milky white of remaining sap stings her fingers and she wiped them on her sleeve, sucked on the tips with a hiss. Her nails are brittle and grey from soaking too long.

It is, above all things he learns, important to know placement and quantity at all times. Fruit, hours, people, intentions; approximate math gets his mind going, but never really helps anyone.

Years later, spying a yellow-thorned fruit from the mess hall of the growing Eadu research installation, smell of wet stones flowing in from the nearby delivery bay, Galen feels the sting on his mother's fingers at his lack of practical foresight.

( _So smart, but so unable to see where all that talent can be applied. How much worse will you be with no Lyra to ground you? No baby's breath whisper against your neck as you sort the playroom for the fifth time that cycle?_ )

* * *

Krennic is unsufferable for the first week, but they make a matching set in that Galen is suffering. They are aligned that way, and sometimes he wonders if that is the natural order of his relationship with Orson Krennic, or if it is truly always engineered to hurt. Galen hopes it is methodless and unintentional – the possibility that a friend is the architect of all his adult struggles is hard to swallow.

( _The simplest answer is often correct._ )

It has been many days adrift, gathering supplies, stopping to report to mining operations. Galen has followed a step behind, listening, numb. He has gone weeks before in the past without saying a word, and that was with the good influence of his wife and better sense. Both are gone – he watched one fall apart, and the other is as brittle and black as ash. Always Krennic tries to bait him, and always Galen has deflected. His mind feels dull.

Today, dressed in resplendent and clean white, Krennic leads Galen to the living quarters of his ( _their, it's partly yours now too by proxy, your mind supplies_ ) starship. They are on the edge of Geonosis, to the foul embryo of a nation-state weapon that has sat inert in the grip of a forgotten outer planet. He wants Galen to see his work the way that he did not want to fully show it before – a shy boy hiding his treasure so no one can know it. Uncharitable, _unscientific_ , Galen's mind supplies.

"Of course we won't remain there," Krennic says with a hand wave. "We have far better things to do and I'm sure you'll be anxious to settle in somewhere better suited for your pursuits. Reestablishing your loyalty to the Empire should be a priority for both of us so that things can get back to normal, but I need you to see what you're working with. I want you to see what this truly will offer in person."

"If your schematics are accurate and the math as it should be, then this is all unnecessary," Galen says, pulling at the cuffs of his uniform. He has forgotten the chafe of the thick fabric; Lyra has made all of his more recent tunics. She has ( _had_ ) tried to keep them simple and soft to keep him focused. She removed a lot of distractions and stressors that way. "The Bang'kor facility with some familiar faces will suffice. I would like to get to work and see my daughter."

Krennic smiles; it's cold. "No time for old friends? No brushing shoulders at all over our life's work? It seems foolish of me to forget just how poor you are with social settings. But no, it's the scope of this that I think you're lacking. Think of how comfortable you and your daughter could be if you complete this with me – complete the Emperor's vision for Project Celestial Power."

Galen frowns, and contemplates the bar of red and blue on Krennic's uniform; his accolades pared down to a simple pin. "It was my vision once, albeit with a different final goal, and you turned it down. What makes it so much more appealing now that you're not the final master? Or do you still think that you are?"

The barb draws blood, and Galen is treated to a grimace. Krennic pulls the sleeves of his white garments into alignment, matching the seams with the bones of his wrist. A place for everything and everything in it's place.

"I have led this from its inception...The Emperor will recognize my efforts for what they are when the time comes and we are able to bring a lasting peace to this decades long conflict."

"As his, of course," Galen says around a bitter twist of his mouth, and looks from the star deck into the dust tired atmosphere, and the waiting dead scythe of the battle station. It is the vivisection of a terrible beast, corridors and vents left open and raw to the void. Missing still is its living heart.

( _You can father this instead – the one thing you can do Orson Krennic that will actually hurt him; take his child for taking yours._ )

* * *

They continue for a time on the starship, through the glimmering whiteness of plasticine halls and the clicking heels of officers and Stormtroopers. They are waiting for a rendezvous, though with who he is not told. He is given holopads loaded with research materials, flickering with the names of scientists and researchers he had hoped long dead instead of pushed into the service of the Empire. It would be kinder to them.

Against his own dread, Galen's mind draws figures and schematics of the work behind his eyes, though he does not scribble them down as he would at home. He's not ready to give them form; they are not safe out in the open. They might actually do what they're supposed to.

The black-masked Death Troopers that haunted him for his first couple of days have all but disappeared, and he wonders often if that's not by design. For reasons beyond his ability to fathom, and Galen has fathomed a great many things, Orson Krennic is determined to be his superior and his friend at the same time. Galen wishes he would make a decision – he cannot stomach the artifice of Krennic's friendliness when the same smile and restrained savagery preceded Lyra falling dead in the grass.

Nights are hardest. Kyber research is always in opposition to healthy sleep, and Galen is no stranger to restlessness, but he falls asleep easily. The trouble is staying asleep, like some animal impulse to gasp for breath after a long time under water. His dreams are troubled corridors down the ventricles and vessels of his heart that twist with his pulse. Anxiety keeps his mind alive through this, and he isn't convinced he's sleeping at all on some occasions. He would prefer to see faces instead of this constant awareness of himself, singular, made of meat.

The homestead on Lah'mu and his family home on Grange had been small, just one sleeping room to be shared with family. Other than his time in the Specials program and the following years of research alone, he has not often had cause to sleep by himself. Keeping him warm, his mother had often pulled him up to rest his head beneath her chin, where her flax colored hair would often tangle in his face and smell of damp earth and a floral oil she would rub in it to keep it smooth during the day. He found sleeping difficult for the first year of his offworld education, made worse by the later death of his parents. ( _You like to think you would have heard the rattle in your mother's lungs before it would take her from you – mucosa of the lungs and symptomatic fever are things you can understand. Cause and effect and solution. Instead she disappears into the night, and when you return it's like she was never there at all except everything's the same. Maybe she'll jump out from behind a door or the broad leafed tree at the end of your street in the city, and it will have all been a terrible joke. You were always bad at understanding them, but you'd find a way to laugh about it if only because she did._ )

Lyra did not like to lay close, but she did always want to be within reach, one ankle hooked over his foot at night. "I run hot when I sleep," she would say, wearing thin fabrics and keeping her body open and sprawled through the night. Once she had caught his leg every night, a little smile and an "all good, and good night" would send him to sleep. The weight of her ankle grounded him on difficult nights. When Jyn was born, she lay between them whenever she could, curled into Galen's side as tender as a flower. His hands on either side of her face, he'd pull her towards him like a lily from water.

"We can't have her in here all the time, you know," said Lyra. "She'll never sleep by herself if we do."

He breathes loudly and smoothly to cover the quiet of his sleeping quarters now, austere thing that it is. There is no warm wife touching a foot to his leg, and no Jyn burrowed between them safe and cradled. Her sleeping braids don't tickle his shoulder, and instead the smell of sanitation chemicals fill the pillow next to him. He could be anywhere or anyone. He doesn't feel like himself in the dark.

His breaths turn ragged when they becomes tears instead. They're hot down either side of his face, following the whorls of his ears, filling them with the hollow roar of displaced air. He keeps breathing through it, choking through this slow, lifelong, gasping death.

* * *

Wilhuff Tarkin looks almost the same as the last time Galen saw him, viperous and thin with hidden meanness. As a man of calculations himself, he can see the Grand Moff's algorithm learning, the rewiring of equations from word to word adjusting to his surroundings. That being said, Galen almost finds himself appreciating the cutting wit that he levels against Krennic and his crew with every breath. It seems equalizing in some way. ( _You have become **very** interested in balance these days._ )

Eventually though, as they all do, he turns his sharp tongue on Galen.

"Well it only took you years to get your business settled, but now I suppose we can get this project properly underway. Erso, so good of you to join us for the remaining duration of the cosntruction," Tarkin says with a head tilt and a thin lipped smirk. Galen focuses on the deep procheilon of his lip, and restrains the angry shaking of his hands to a mere tremor.

"The initial invitation was unattractive, but the job appears to have held indefinitely while others worked to make up my mind," he says, and sees the glint of some satisfaction and irritation in equal measure in the Grand Moff's face. "Usually research positions come with benefits, not murder." This last part is throaty, tired. He can't rest yet.

"A failure on Director Krennic's part to properly negotiate and explain, I assure you. Let's not throw stones, but all the same. My apologies for your loss – I understand you and your wife were together for many years. It is," and here he hisses in a breath, "unfortunate that she was unable to see the merits of your family's contribution to the Empire, but there were better ways to handle it than exiling yourself to a rim world, surely."

Krennic seethes, but also rolls his eyes slowly like he is watching the changing of space, flitting into a new room like a nervous bird. "I feel the situation was...misjudged. We feel terribly about it, Tarkin and I." Tarkin's mouth twists into something harsh. "But just think, there's Jyn to care for still – I'm sure we'll have her with you in short order. A man of Vader's stature doesn't have time for things like that."

Galen is getting better at spotting lies now; he knows what he's looking for when he pays attention. His heart clenches at the memory of Vader standing across from Krennic, and wonders at how Jyn has slept this week.

"One does miss their ability make a decision for themselves," Galen says, but with no air behind it. It sits awkwardly suspended, barely leaves his mouth. There's an unintended vulnerability to them that he wants to snatch back out of the room and hide. This is a long game, and he doesn't aim to win - just to not lose so badly.

* * *

Dinner is insisted upon by Krennic and Tarkin alike, both drawing blood with their smiles in a way that makes Galen think of predators at a corpse, snapping at each other for a piece of gamy sinew. Krennic is only too pleased with himself when given the opportunity to pull open a cabinet near the long elegant dining table within his very spacious apartment. Tarkin, unsurprisingly with his tidily dressed entourage of officers, looks unimpressed.

"It's been such a long time since we've all been in agreement on this project, and I think it deserves a bit of a celebration," says Krennic, grabbing a tall bottle with cobalt glass and an elaborate gold wax seal. "A Nubian vintage, not too far from the Emperor's ancestral homelands. Certainly not so rare as a Naberrie estate," he adds with false humility - Galen knows the credit cost of that single bottle would feed many families - before frowning at this, turning the glass in his hands. "I hear they don't sell or grow anymore."

"A shame," says Tarkin, shark mouthed but bored. Galen can see him counting minutes until escape is fortuitous. He wonders why they perpetuate this farce at all. "I've had the pleasure once or twice in the last year, but it's an increasingly tedious subject at meals when the ladies and sentimentals of the court call it bad luck. Merely wasted emerald grapes on a shelf if you don't drink it."

Galen eyes the bottle, thinks of the doe-eyed senator he had only ever heard of in passing. Fasting was an expectation of the bereft Nubian family; it was no hardship for them to end the estate's production. It all tasted like ash in their mouth anyways – Galen is now learning how dirty taking sustenance feels as the survivor. A culture of histrionics he had thought at the time, wasting a livelihood for tradition. Now the idea of drinking the wine makes him nauseous. What does his own child eat? Does a machine of a man like Vader even remember food? ( _Will you remember to feed her too with no Lyra to remind you?_ )

"How is Jyn?," he says quietly. "I would think that the military commander of the Empire would have sent her away by now. Somewhere near the capital."

"Nothing to report, I'm afraid," says Krennic. "But Lord Vader does keep busy with the Emperor's martial affairs on a very personal level. He hates waste of any sort, much like our good governor here with his grapes."

"I suspect he hates a great number of things, poor military tactics notwithstanding," says Tarkin around a thin smile. "Managing deserters seems low on his priority list, but somehow he finds the time," he says with teeth, and takes a tidy bite of his meal. His fingers are tight and corded with tendons, a lean animal that is hungry and sanguine. Krennic has the gall to look annoyed, but all Galen can feel is that he is the actual punchline to a joke.

"A man of many talents," Galen says tightly, and pinches the stem of his glassware. ( _Sand to amorphous solid by means of heat-pressure-silicate compounds –_ ) "One wonders where they dragged him up from."

Tarkin takes a sip of his Nubian wine. The cobalt blue of the bottle shines from the table with swirling gold, but the drink sits in his glass in an eerie green. ( _Rising water crawling up your mother's knees while she counts-_ )

He swallows. "Somewhere not unlike where you came from, I'm sure."


End file.
